Hello again! We’re back with Part 8 in our 19-Part FinerMinds series on Becoming Just Awesome. This week we’re going to cover something almost everyone struggles with every now and then: Negative Self-Talk.
What is negative self-talk, you ask. It’s that nagging voice in your head that pours you a negative cocktail of half-truths, poor logic and distortions of reality. It’s your mind interpreting events and circumstances (whether external or internal) through a lens of pessimism and self-loathing. Overall, it’s a big problem, and far too many people struggle with it.
Most of us don’t even realize how bad our negative self-talk is. When it comes to ourselves and how we perceive the world, we tear ourselves down and adopt a ‘glass half empty’ approach to life. We do this so often, it becomes a habit or a set pattern of thinking. Far too often we get ourselves into these negative thought spirals. Unfortunately, it’s extremely damaging.
I want you to meet Elizabeth. To most observers, Liz has ‘got it all’. Liz is a doctor. She’s 34 years old. She’s attractive; runs half marathons; is funny, outgoing and smart; and has a great circle of family and friends who love her to bits. She also has a kind and handsome fiancé who would do almost anything for her.
Now let’s get inside Liz’s head. What does Liz think about herself? You’d think with all she has going for her she’d be the happiest person on the planet, right? Wrong.
Liz suffers from some serious negative self-talk. She beats herself up because she thinks she’s not as intelligent and accomplished as other doctors because she’s just a general practitioner and not a specialist. She gets down on herself because she isn’t a real marathon runner; she just runs half-marathons. She loses sleep over the fact that she’s 34 and doesn’t have children yet. She worries incessantly that she’s not young enough or attractive enough for her fiancé because he is just so amazing (she secretly thinks “why would he want to be with me?”). All this negative self-talk often leaves Liz feeling anxious, depressed and exhausted, though she tries not to let it show.
It’s completely absurd for Liz to think and feel this way, but she continues to do so. At this point, it’s automatic for her. Actually, she doesn’t even know she does it. And neither do you, I imagine.
How often do you monitor your thoughts? Probably not very often, if you’re like most people. Spend a day simply observing what you think about. Observe what your mind is expressing about you and the world. Is it going: “You’re awesome! You can do it! Life rocks!”? Or is it going: “Don’t even bother. You don’t stand a chance. The world is against you.” If you’ve got the latter going on, you need help. Continuous negative self-talk will make you miserable and bitter.
But there are steps you can take to manage and minimize negative self-talk.
- Simply becoming aware of your negative self-talk is the first step.
- Understanding the origin of your negative self-talk and the mechanisms behind it is the second part.
- Finally, it is important to practice exercises that will slowly re-program you to process information in a positive light.
When we’re in a bad mood, most of us can say why we’re in a bad mood. We can identify the ‘trigger’, whether it was our boss yelling at us or not being able to fit into our pants because we gained five pounds. What we fail to consider is the role our thoughts play in all this. We just look at the trigger and mood and see a direct relationship.
We fail to take responsibility for the fact that how we process an event is what leads us down the path to feeling angry and upset. We think the trigger is the cause. WRONG. How we process the event is the cause. We need to take responsibility and learn how to process information differently, in a more positive light.
I highly recommend watching the video below. Dr. Darryl Cross, an Executive and Personal Coach as well as a clinical psychologist, elegantly explains how we get ourselves into this negative self-talk mess.
He’s even going to show you an exercise to get you thinking positively in two weeks.
Enjoy! And let me know how the exercise works for you!
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Hi,
Where is the video you talk about — or is it still to come?
Regards,
Dawid.
I think we all have too much negativity, but shedding it is easier said than done.
Very true. Very effective. I found a change the very first time I started writing..
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THE POSITIVE MESSAGE AND LESSON.
Excellent presentation. It is important to note, our behaviour is our conditioned response to an event,not the event per se. If the reponse mechanism is altered, happiness follows,with equanimity of the mind.
Thank you for the presentation. I think this is an excellent approach. I know for sure that the more we catch ourselves along the path of negative thinking, the more aware we become of undesirable thought patterns and the easier it becomes to choose a different path. What often happens is that some of us turn to smoking, drinking… in order to deal directly with the negative emotions rather than attempting to see the positive side of things by adjusting our perception and thought pattern to change our feeling and emotions. Just a thought! E.S
Great stuff!! Thanks!
Thanks for addressing a topic that many people suffer from. The approach seems simple but is in fact powerful. I plan to share this information.
Hi,
Anyone suffering from a negative mindset will find the paper very empowering.
my personal reality is that despite my own negative mindset, the fact is that some negativity has lived with me for over 50 years. Of course I would like to make it entirely history. But it has not happened.
In my capacity as a personal coach, I have been working with a young woman who is living loads of highly distressing negativity originating from difficulties she had at school before she was ten.
At about 12 she was sent away to a boarding school in a foreign land in the hope that she could get held. But her parents were wrong.
She was ridiculed because she did not understand the language well enough to understand he subjects; the teachers gave up on her and consequently her performance plummeted. Her year mates made fun of her. She repeated the same class so many times that she is now behind girls who are six years her juniors. The result? low esteem, self worth and loss of confidence in her abilities.
She tella me, rather persuasively, that she could have done better if she had not been sent overseas.
Her challenge is that the “causes” and the “effects’ are palpable to her. They are real in her life. She repeated classes because she could not understand the lessons. And if she failed so many times she must be incapable(even though she feels horrible accepting that).
The young lady, now in her mid twenties has identified several actions to be taken to address the situation but they will take the next five or more years and lot more money than her parents can afford to achieve them.
this is a challenge i am I am determined to accept for the sake of the young woman, Might any of you have a shorter and more effective approaches to this distressing experience.
My appreciation in advance
Kofi
Thanks a lot for the video. This a great exercise to start into the new and exciting year 2009.
I just got off the phone with a depressed friend across the country and went thru all of this and more.[the concept is wonderful], As Charles Swindoll said.” LIFE IS 10% WHAT HAPPENS TO ME AND 90% HOW I REACT TO IT ” OR NOT REACT TO IT..
The first thing that pops into my head is ” I can’t think of anything positve about that”. Which is usually the first thing a person thinks..SOOOO, I would like to see someone give some “real life” examples of a common situation, that gives some “positve replacement thoughts”..SUCH AS–MY LIFE HAS NO MEANING…
It may be the job stresses of money,friends and neighborhood behaviour of not finding what causes negative thinking the leaving behind the thought process and speeding can make it into a physical problem as well such as attachment to the heart circulatory.
What video are you talking about
Everything is easier “said than done.” I recommend calling up a buddy or “support friend” who can keep you responsible in your “actions” and work together on a similar goal…negative self-talk is an “energy leak” in our personal power and keeps us from reaching our full potential…can we afford NOT to act?
The Maturity Decision
We have come to the time in history where we must make a choice. The choice is to transcend into our final level of maturity – or to slide into a descent toward a crude survival level of existence.
What has happened is that we are beginning to run out of many things needed for our comfortable existence. None of our leaders knows how to solve this problem.
Why do the leaders of our world act like politicians when what is needed are statesmen?
What is needed is for the people of the world to change their minds. How?
Please review the Maturity Table that follows:
Maturity Table
The negative values The positive values
Emotional Thinking Rational Thinking
Ego Amygdale Super Ego – Higher Self – Spirit — Cortexes
———————————————————————————————————-
–100% +100%
———————————————————————————————————-
Suicidal Depression Complete Happiness
Power Consensus
Selfishness Selflessness
Inequality Equality
Problems Solutions
‘Must turn on’ meditation ‘Always on’ meditation
‘Muddled’ thought Pure clear thought
Hate, anger, judgment, fear Love, compassion, concern, acceptance
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You have heard of the expression “I am of two minds about this”. Let’s talk about these two minds – the emotional mind of the Amygdale – and the rational mind of the Cortexes. Regarding human history, man started out with the Unity of only his emotional mind. The emotional mind was needed at the ‘primitive level’ to give an instant emotional warning of danger to generate action to escape whatever danger was at hand. This is also true of the human child at birth but the child is incapable of physical action. The other mind – the rational mind – did not come into noticeable play until philosophers like Aristotle, Plato, Socrates and Archimedes were able to leave written documents of their teachings. Concerning the baby – the rational mind may not begin to have a contributing effect on the child’s behavior until the child is anywhere from eight to twenty years old.
Question – do we really need our emotional mind? Can we exist with only our rational mind to guide our actions? How do we get rid of our emotional mind?
Answer – I have been living with only my rational mind active. Seven years ago, my emotional mind was actually “deleted” from my brain. For seven years now, I have been searching for others like me. I am now seventy-nine and more vitally alive than I have ever been.
Concerning the Maturity Table, all the Negative Values are no longer part of my life. Thus I can think ‘hate’ but the visceral feelings that used to go with ‘hate’ are no longer felt. I can only think ‘hate’ in a rational clinical manner. Actually, I no longer think about any of the Negative Values because they have become meaningless to my present life.
On the other hand, the positive values have become very much a part of my life:
COMPLETE HAPPINESS. There is a happiness within me that I can feel to the very depths of my soul. It is not the happiness of having things, liquor, drugs, or winning the lotto. It is the happiness of having a deep confidence in myself – of having solved all my past problems – and the ability to handle all future problems easily. Happiness is always JUST THERE.
SELFLESSNESS. With all my inner problems solved, I can now look outward to helping others by working with them to make them and the world a better place to live in.
I can now ‘see’ attributes in my wife that had been hidden by my selfishness. My wife and I are now truly partners in life.
EQUALITY. It seems so natural now to think of all others as equals and be glad that they still have their individuality to be people, not robots. It is so easy to treat all others with the respect and kindness they deserve.
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MEDITATION. Meditation is no longer a task to begin by staring at my belly button or saying “ooommm” or doing some other process in order to be in ‘meditative mode’.
Now I can be in either meditative or reality mode and can switch between the two modes in an instant. For example, I can be in meditative mode but switch instantly to reality when my wife asks me a question then switch back to meditation instantly after I have answered her question. With meditation on call whenever reality allows, I am never bored. Meditation has become my life.
CLARITY. With EGO no longer yelling at me, I am blessed with a wonderful clarity of thought without interruption. I can now ‘hear’ the occasional gentle thoughts of intuition from Spirit that may direct me to another way of thinking. This method of thinking should bring the human race to the highest level of being.
SOLUTIONS. The human race has advanced to where we are today by recognizing a problem — then working toward a solution. Without EGO, I never have to waste my time worrying about problems. When a problem arises, I instantly go into solution mode to work on getting the problem solved.
CONSENSUS. This concept seems to be so simple to follow – and yet following it seems to be almost impossible. Look at the countries in the world operating under the POWER concept of “it’s my way or the highway”. America is operating under Republican and Democratic POWERS where nothing is being done because the power of each is so evenly divided that CONSENSUS is not possible. Problems of energy, food, overpopulation, drinking water, refugees, environment are growing daily without any concerted attempt at any solution. Today, weather problems threaten to overwhelm parts of the Midwest. Tomorrow, what problem will be next?
The answer is of course to bring the Statesmen back to solve the world’s problems by using the CONSENSUS concept without compromise.
The final thought about this table is that I live each positive concept at the 100% level with the feeling that if you are going to live on the positive side of life, go for it totally.
How did all these wonderful things happen to me?
Some seven years ago, while being treated for scoliosis, I was told that my feelings of self sabotage were part of my scoliosis not straightening as it should. A few sessions of therapy did not seem to be working so I developed a therapy I called the Pollyanna Principles. The Principles are:
Intent. The intent in my case is to deal with my self sabotage problems. Since I do not know what these problems are the plan is to deal with any ‘negative’ thought by trying to
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find a ‘positive’ value somewhere in that thought. If I find a ‘positive’ value, I ‘move on’. If I cannot find a ‘positive ‘value, I tell myself to ‘sleep on it’ and move on. To
help myself with this process, I created a Table (similar to the Maturity Table above) of all the negatives I could think of then offset each negative with its positive value.
Practice. This was the hard part. I had to stay focused all the time to make sure that any negative thought never gained traction but was always immediately countered by the positive process.
Result. About two months after practicing the Pollyanna Principles, I awoke one morning and found all the positive values mentioned above within me but also found that EGO and none of the negative values were there. Scientifically, how did these positive values come to be there? Where did EGO and the negative values go? I had to wait about six years until my oldest daughter found a book for me called “The Brain That Changes Itself” by Norman Doidge, M. D. The book tells of the fact that the brain has “plasticity”. A good example explaining “plasticity” is what happens in the brain to a person becoming blind. That portion of the brain accepting sight then becomes inactive or dormant. The brain actually recognizes that this portion is not being used. Possibly, when the blind person starts to learn Braille, the brain recognizes this type of learning as a new skill and looks for a place to put the new skill. The brain sees that the “accepting sight” portion is dormant, declares portion as the new “Braille portion” and overlays the “sight” portion with the new “Braille” learning.
In my case, I wanted to lose the ‘negativity’ of ‘self sabotage’. Due to my almost draconian process of thinking only positively by practicing the Pollyanna principles, the ‘negative’ portion of my brain became more and more inactive. Over time my being ‘positive’ became so powerful that being ‘negative’ was no longer part of my life. My brain found the ‘negative’ portion of my brain inactive and most likely replaced the ‘negativity’ with a flood of new ‘positive’ thoughts.
By the way, EGO, as the monarch of ‘negativity’ also lost his job when ‘positive’ thoughts overlaid his area. That is why he has not ‘talked’ to me since that fateful morning.
I would now like to review the elements shown on the Maturity Table. This table defines the two sides of our personalities:
The NEGATIVE emotional side headed by our emotional EGO.
The POSITIVE rational side headed by our rational SPIRIT
DEPRESSION. This is a major mental illness caused by our emotional EGO. This causes extensive non productiveness and can lead to suicide. A surprising ‘cure’ for this
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condition is alcohol and drugs that can change the mental process to a wonderful happiness similar to what I have. The problem occurs when the effects of the alcohol or
drugs wears off. The cycle of the ‘cure’ eventually leads to addiction and jail time for just a few hours of happiness and well being.
HAPPINESS. Yes, drugs and/or alcohol can bring temporary happiness but the ‘side effects’ can make you quite unhappy when the effects wear off.. My theory is that you are born with happiness but unfortunately are also born with EGO. Because we still do not know how to be parents, the EGO has full in charge to ‘darken’ our happiness with many ‘clouds’ of unhappiness. This ‘cloudiness’ continues until our cerebral cortexes start to mitigate with ‘reason’ when we reach an age from eight to twenty years old. The reason the bookstore bookshelves are crowded with books on how to be happy is that many people are trying to find happiness and read book after book without finding it. So many people with so many theories make each new theory a best seller. My theory will never be a best seller. The solution is so simple that only a few paragraphs were needed to explain it – and the solution is free. Just go ahead and get started.
POWER. Our EGO tells us that we are better than others. This feeling allows us to control them. Politicians like Mugabe have used this power to literally destroy their countries. American power is even more senseless. Nothing is being done because the two parties are polarized to inaction. For instance, I would ask Obama to promise to do three things. First, do something about our Illinois state, city and county governments – second, call a referendum to cancel the sixty vote senate rule – third, call another referendum to allow the President a line item veto to halt all pork I ask everyone I meet to name one Statesman in the world and never get an answer.
CONSENSUS. CONSENSUS, NOT COMPROMISE are what Statesmen are best at.
What are Statesmen? They are people that practice the principles at the 100% positive level on the above table — like happiness, consensus, selflessness, practice equality and deal only with solutions using clear minds in meditative thought and practice love, concern, compassion and acceptance.
Until we all come to act like Statesmen, the world cannot move forward. Is it reasonable to ask everyone to achieve the 100% positive level?
So, how does this future of Statesmen start? Well, it starts with me beginning to teach classes on how to become a Statesman. Who are the least qualified? Why, politicians, of course.
Who are the best qualified? Well, I would pick registered nurses, debating team students and their parents, policemen and firemen, and any other group that already have some of the group bonding feeling within them. When the total group reaches the 100% positive level, they will graduate with the understanding that each of them will teach another
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class. Those who reach the 100% early will, with their new found selflessness, stay in the class to help teach the others to reach their 100%.
What will these groups do? Well, that is for them to decide. What they will never do is to appoint a leader because they have learned a type of cohesiveness that makes discussion to reach a consensus a natural part of their being. What if groups decide to work together? Again, the groups merging will be effortless and the newly merged group will also be leaderless. Carry this process to its logical conclusion and you have a nation of homogeneous people that DO NOT NEED A LEADER to make their decisions. Why is this true? Well, actually it is true only for those who have become selfless and purely happy because EGO no longer interferes with their positive feelings. That allows consensus to rule. Imagine – no laws are now needed because everyone has the innate ability to know what is right. Imagine – no regulations are needed because everyone innately knows how to do things the rationally right way. Imagine – the homogeneous people have all become EQUALS – the homogeneous people have all become STATESMEN.
Conclusion
Mankind thinking has thus far gone through two stages.
The first stage was the primitive stage where all thinking was done at the emotional level.
EGO, the leader of the emotional thinking, kept people alive by yelling at them to WATCH OUT. Thus thinking was UNITARY level ONLY.
The second stage began when the CORTEXES developed to allow people to think rationally. Because people could then think emotionally or rationally, DUALITY came into existence.
This DUALITY allowed humans to advance scientifically to have a world most of us are